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Stagg Kettle Moves Towards Awesome Sauce

I think the world is starting to become a crazy cool place. Integration with technology has become possible for every day items...like a kettle. It seems strange to want a kettle to be integrated with tech, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes.


The first question is why would we want to integrate tech into common every day tools?

I think the current answer is: Why not? That is part of the creative side of innovation. Sometimes you jump outside the box to see what you learn and sometimes you strategically step outside the box to get around barriers. We are in the "jump out of the box and see what happens" phase of tech integration.

For me, I like tech integration because it helps with the details... and that's where the devil is. I know the common American doesn't look into the 1800 chemical compounds that go into making a great cup of coffee, they just want it to taste good. I, being a crafts man, want to craft to the best of my ability. Tech integration helps me do that.

The Stag Kettle is a great example of this (this is a kick starter with interesting info: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fellow/stagg-ekg-the-electric-pour-over-kettle-for-coffee?ref=2kjzx8).

I look at this and cannot help but be excited. The reality is that I cannot afford to spend $120 on a kettle, but maybe I will for my shop...some day.

This is a finer tool than I currently have. What I have is an old school kettle that just goes 'til it boils. I then transfer it to my pour over kettle and let it sit for bit, hoping my temperature has dropped to the 12 degrees for brewing. My first though is that if the kettle can get me to 200 degrees without boiling, I may have better tasting water. Secondly, I know exactly the temperature I'm brewing with. I feel like the difference is the same between a hammer and chisel and the laser sharpened wood carving tools. Both of them can do the job, but the finer, more precise tool is going be able to achieve much more nuance.

The biggest benefit of tech integration is repeat-ability. Consumers operate off confidence. If they cannot trust you to produce what they like each time, they won't come to you. There is huge variance in brewing methods and philosophies of people. So storing recipes and connecting multiple brewers is amazing. In my day job, we are always talking about consistency between how people operate. It is one of the toughest aspects of operations...and any team anywhere really. This tool helps measure that and what gets measured, gets managed.

I was just reading articles and thought this was interesting and wanted to share my thoughts. I think there is some cool stuff in our near future.

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